Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas Portal

Current distribution of Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are groups of people native to a specific region that inhabited the Americas before the arrival of European settlers in the 15th century and the ethnic groups who continue to identify themselves with those peoples.

The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are diverse; some Indigenous peoples were historically hunter-gatherers, while others traditionally practice agriculture and aquaculture. In some regions, Indigenous peoples created pre-contact monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies and empires. These societies had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture and gold smithing. (Full article...)

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The Kiowa /ˈkaɪ.oʊwə/ are a nation of American Indians of the Great Plains. They migrated from western Montana southward into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries, In 1867, the Kiowa moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.

Today they are federally recognized as Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma with headquarters in Carnegie, Oklahoma. The Kiowa language is still spoken today and is part of the Tanoan language family. As of 2011^[update], there are 12,000 members.

Kiowa call themselves Ka'igwu, meaning "Principal People". Ancient names were Kwu-da and Tep-da, relating to the myth pulling or coming out of a hollow log until a pregnant woman got stuck. Later, they called themselves Kom-pa-bianta for "people with large tipi flaps", before they met Southern Plains tribes or before they met white men. Another explanation of their name "Kiowa" originated after their migration through what the Kiowa refer to as "The Mountains of the Kiowa" (Kaui-kope) in the present eastern edge of Glacier National Park, Montana, just south of the border with Canada.

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Bison hunting, by Karl Bodmer, 1839

image credit: public domain

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General images

The following are images from various Indigenous peoples of the Americas-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Evo Morales, an Aymara member and former President of Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 2A Huichol woman from Zacatecas, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 3The bean is native to Mexico and Central America and later began to be cultivated in South America. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 4Guambía people relaxing in Colombia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 5Areas of Indigenous peoples in North America at time of European colonization (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 6The ancient mesoamerican engraving of maize now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 7Members of an uncontacted tribe encountered in Acre in present-day Brazil in 2009 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 8An Indigenous man playing a panpipe, antara, or siku (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 9A bison hunt depicted by George Catlin (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 10A carnival with Tzeltal people in Tenejapa Municipality, Chiapas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 11A Navajo man on horseback in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 12A Mapuche man in present-day Chile (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 13A schematic illustration of maternal (mtDNA) gene-flow in and out of Beringia, from 25,000 years ago to present
Image 14A Navajo boy in the desert in present-day Monument Valley in Arizona with the "Three Sisters" rock formation in the background in 2007 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 15Maya women from present-day Guatemala (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 16A Warao family traveling in their canoe in Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 17Indigenous people at a farm plantation in Minas Gerais in present-day Brazil, c. 1824 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 18Owners of a roadside cafe near Cachi, Salta Province, Argentina (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 19Principal component analysis showing the Native American cluster in other Eurasian populations. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 20A Mayan woman (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 21The domesticated plant species that were cultivated by the Indigenous peoples have influenced the crops that were produced globally. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 22Chimu culture feather pectoral, feathers, reed, copper, silver, hide, cordage, c. 1350–1450 (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 23A Mapuche man and woman; the Mapuche make up about 85% of Indigenous population that live in Chile. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 24A map showing the origin of the first wave of humans into the Americas, including the Ancestral Northern Eurasian, which represent a distinct Paleolithic Siberian population, and the Northeast Asians, which are an East Asian-related group. The admixture happened somewhere in Northeast Siberia. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 25Indigenous Pipil women dancing in the traditional Procession of Palms in Panchimalco, El Salvador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 26The West Indies in relation to the continental Americas (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 27The tomato (jitomate, in central Mexico) was later cultivated by the pre-Hispanic civilizations of Mexico. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 28Indigenous peoples textile art in 1995 by Julia Pingushat, including Inuk, Arviat, Nunavut, Canada, wool, and embroidery floss (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 29Maya glyphs in stucco now on display at Museo de sitio in Palenque, Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 30Shaman of the Cofán people from the Amazonian forest in present-day Ecuador (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 31An Indigenous woman in traditional dress near Cochabamba, Bolivia (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 32A Choctaw artist in present-day Oklahoma (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 33"The Maiden", one of the discovered Llullaillaco mummies, a preserved Inca human sacrifice from around the year 1500. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 34Quechua women in festive dress on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca, west of Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 35An Indigenous Terena man from present-day Brazil (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 36The Rarámuri marathon in Urique (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 37A map of Canada showing the percent of self-reported indigenous identity (First Nations, Inuit, Métis) by census division, according to the 2021 Canadian census (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 38Wayuu women in the Guajira Peninsula, which comprises parts of Colombia and Venezuela (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 39An illustration in Florentine Codex, compiled between 1540 and 1585, depicting the Nahua peoples suffering from smallpox during the conquest-era in central Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 40Language families of Indigenous peoples in North America shown across present-day Canada, Greenland, the United States, and northern Mexico (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 41Tunumiit Inuit couple from Kulusuk, Greenland (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 42The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona, are a culturally intact, largely pre-Columbian era society. (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 43A Quechua woman and child in the Sacred Valley in Cuzco Region, Peru (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)
Image 44The major indigenous language families of much of present-day South America and Panama (from Indigenous peoples of the Americas)

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Juan Evo Morales Ayma, (born October 26, 1959), popularly known as Evo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈeβo]), is a Bolivian politician, cocalero activist, and footballer, who has served as President of Bolivia since 2006. Widely regarded as the country's first democratically-elected president to come from the indigenous population, his administration has focused on the implementation of leftist policies, poverty reduction, and combating the influence of the United States and transnational corporations in Bolivia. A democratic socialist, he is the head of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) political party.

Born to an Aymara family of subsistence farmers in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Morales undertook a basic education before mandatory military service, in 1978 moving to Chapare Province. Growing coca and becoming a trade unionist, he rose to prominence in the campesino (rural laborers) union, campaigning against U.S. and Bolivian attempts to eradicate coca as a part of the War on Drugs, which he denounced as an imperialist violation of indigenous Andean culture. He repeatedly engaged in anti-government direct action protests, resuting in multiple arrests. Entering electoral politics in 1995, he became the leader of the MAS and was elected to Congress. His campaign focused on issues affecting indigenous and poor communities, advocating land reform and the redistribution of gas wealth. Gaining increasing visibility through the Cochabamba protests and gas conflict, in 2002 he was expelled from Congress, though came second in that year's presidential election.

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Did you know…

... that Lutheran priest Henrik Lund wrote Greenland's nation anthem, Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit, in the indigenous Greenlandic language?
... that the artwork of full-blood Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Haldane has enjoyed a revival after his glass plate negatives were discovered in an Alaskan dump?
... that in traditional Plains hide painting, Native American women painted abstract, geometric designs while men painted representational, narrative images?

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Native village of Chipitiere, in the Cultural Zone of Manu National Park, Peru

image credit: Martin St-Amant

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This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk · contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.